Volunteer work is for suckers

I figured there were probably shenanigans at play, when I saw that XXL had posted a link yesterday to a story about how Kanye West and Amber Rose volunteered at a homeless shelter over the holidays, even though that shit took place a long time ago.

Then I went and busted a shift at the BGM. When I got back, I checked Necole Bitchie's site, and I saw where even she was going in on Kanye for trying too hard to draw attention to the fact that he did a little volunteer work, thus proving he only did it in the first place to get his name in the paper. If he did it at all. He may have just taken a few pictures with homeless people and said he did volunteer work for them.

I might try that shit myself, the next time I'm in the U City Loop, just to give my image a boost. It's been a while since a girl has emailed me and offered to have sex with me solely on the basis of my blogging (don't be jealous), and I'm thinking it might have to do with the ascendance of my Tumblr, which (most) women don't appreciate as much. Even the response to a couple of recent posts about why no one wants to marry black women has been more harsh than usual.

(Speaking of black chicks, I'd hate to give the impression that checking Necole Bitchie's site is the first thing I do when I get home from the BGM, either because I'm obsessed with black celebrity gossip, or for other reasons, which I'm sure you can imagine. It's just, right before I walked out the door yesterday, I saw where Sandra Rose had posted some ridonkulous looking pictures of her, and I thought some beef might be popping off. I find that shit hilarious.)

It's obvious to me that Kanye is trying to get his career back in order, and someone has convinced him that the best way to go about doing that is to tone down the douchebag image he's cultivated over the years. In addition to the photo op at the homeless shelter, there was that rhyme he kicked onstage at a Kid Cudi concert the other day, before announcing that he was headed back to the studio, presumably to record actual rap music, not any more of this bullshit where he slightly rewords songs by Tears for Fears and sings them in autotune. And that blog post from yesterday or the day before, in which he compared himself to Maya Angelou, Gil Scott Heron and Nina Simone. Which seems conceited to say the least, but I do seem to recall him mentioning something about being more positive. The gist of it, as I recall, was that he was gonna focus on being less of a douche.

This could be hard to watch. It was bad enough having to watch Chris Brown, all last year, begging to go on Oprah, going on Larry King Live dressed as the black Mr. Rogers, dutifully avoiding describing what really happened during the Rumble in the Lambo, so on and so forth. And you see what good that did him. His and Rihanna's albums came out right around the same time, and neither of them sold particularly well, thus proving to me that people don't feel sorry for what happened to Rihanna, but they are disappointed in Chris Brown, for not manning up when it came time to get his image back in order. Dealing with the issue the way he did made him look weak, which, oddly enough, made him look that much more guilty. If he would have projected strength, people would have been that much more confident that whatever he did he did for a reason.

I suspect something similar's gonna happen with Kanye West. White people aren't gonna forget about what he did to Taylor Swift, regardless of how many pictures he takes with homeless people. The only homeless white people care about are homeless dogs. That's why there's a such thing as homeless people in the first place. No, the only way Kanye West is gonna get white people to forgive - or at least forget - about what he did to Taylor Swift is to make another album they like, in which case all of this extra feigned humility won't be necessary. It worked for R. Kelly, back when people began to realize just how many underage girls he's probably had sex with over the years, not to mention how many of them he probably peed on. Then he put out the "Ignition" remix and all was forgiven. Granted, all of R. Kelly's "victims" were black, but they were still kids. I'm not saying that raping a seemingly endless number of black children and interrupting a white woman's award acceptance speech should be viewed as roughly comparable. I'm just saying. They probably are.